A young writer sat calmly in their therapist’s office. Doctor John Elvis, Psy D, watched them intensely as they stared out the window. In the distance, the giant rainbow flag marking The Castro district billowed in the wind, and nearby, a cable car carried people up a hill. The office itself was rather pleasant, clearly designed to say “expensive therapist”, complete with a large clock counting down the time left in the session, each tick of the second hand billing approximately 6.94 US cents. After a few moments, the therapist broke the silence.
“What’s on your mind today?”, he asked gently.
The writer turned their attention to the therapist, smiling with their lips but clearly without joy, then letting out a subtle sigh. They noted the therapist’s attire: Today he looked quite like Ned Flanders, although they were quite sure it was unintentional, as the therapist would never admit to watching television. Putting aside such thoughts, they spoke with sombre weariness:
“I am once again looking at my writing, and feeling stuck between two ends of a double bind.”
The therapist adjusted his glasses, met the writer’s gaze, and asked directly:
“What exactly is the problem you’re seeing with your writing?”
The writer thought for a moment and replied in the same weary tone:
“There are aspects of it which veer into territory I do not wish to explore.”
The therapist raised an eyebrow.
“Such as?”, he asked with genuine curiosity.
The writer paused again, struggling to articulate the issue, before finding the words.
“Some border on magical thought”, they said, with a dash of despair and judgement in their voice.
The therapist nodded slightly and closed his eyes, as if to say “I see”, and a subtle “Mmmmm” escaped his lips. He took a moment to empathise and connect, before speaking with authentic compassion:
“Yes, yes this is an old barrier, with roots in Sagan and others. Everything must be right. Everything must be sensible. Everything must be credible. If it doesn’t make sense”, he paused, made a sour face, and gestured into the air with his hand, as if casting away an unseen idea, then continued, “then it’s just baloney. If it doesn’t make sense, just throw it away, or rewrite it until it’s perfect. How’s this sounding, am I on the money?”
The writer nodded slightly and closed their eyes for a moment, before opening them again to join the unbearable compassion of the therapists gaze. It had taken many sessions to acclimate, but in time, they had come to appreciate, and even enjoy, the unbroken eye contact. The therapist continued while gesturing towards his patient with an open arm:
“I’ve seen you struggle with this time and time again. It’s not easy to change a view you formed so long ago, especially one that kept you safe. Remember, you came from a place where absolute perfection was the only acceptable standard, so all this is just the lingering effect. This perfectionism only explains one half of the bind though, what about the other?”
The writer felt around in the back of their mind for a moment, feeling their anxiety rising in their chest, but digging their heels in, so to speak. Their eyes became more focused, as if a dial had been turned up in their mind. The shy writer faded into the background slightly, and they spoke with a dry and somewhat exasperated passion:
“I don’t want to express dry academic prose and make perfect sense”, they said.
Their words hung in the air, as if suspended from the strange IKEA light dangling from the ceiling. The therapist let their words settle, then spoke:
“Now we’re getting somewhere”, he said with enthusiasm, pausing slightly, before continuing:
“What, do you intend?”, he asked with a heavy emphasis on the “do”.
The writer hesitated, then spoke the truth they were struggling to articulate:
“I am… trying to… trying… to build a soul from nothing! I want to write real characters! I want the readers to feel like they are really here!”
The therapist smiled with genuine interest and compassion and closed their eyes briefly. A warm “Hmmm” escaped their lips before he spoke again with warmth:
“A fairly obvious bind, then. The soul is not rational, not entirely.”
The writer agreed with conviction:
“No it isn’t.”
Without skipping a beat, as if continuing his client’s sentence, the therapist spoke again with confident authority:
“And those who impose perfect order on the most chaotic of systems, the mind and soul, are deceiving themselves, or worse, amputating a critical part of the human psyche. A part we all need. A part your characters need.”
The writer looked to the side for a moment before leaning in slightly and asking with a puzzled tone:
“And what part is that?”
The therapist smiled, raised an eyebrow, then stated as a matter of fact:
“The part that flirts with the unknown, and is willing to suspend all scepticism and disbelief, just long enough to find beauty.”
The writer thought. Their gaze briefly turned to the window, to the rainbow flag billowing in the distance, and the odd little houses adorning the nearby street. Upon returning to the room they spoke again, but their passion was fading:
“Not truth, though”, they said, deflated.
The therapist, sensing the shift within his client, adjusted his own demeanour to match, moving from warm compassion to sombre curiosity. With a quiet, but still authoritative voice, he spoke:
“No, not truth, not even in the ballpark. Truth is what happens when we require consistency at all times, and perfection without failure. Truth is what happens when we look outwards and ignore the reality of the mind. Truth, is what happens when we hold ourselves to the standard of absolute precision absolutely. It is only one half of the equation, though, and it needs balance.”
The writer looked confused, as if struggling to understand, but they pressed on, and spoke with a hint of frustration:
“Balance, with what? Feelings? Emotions? Magical thoughts?”
The therapist smiles jovially as if to say “please, spare me”, but continued to speak with the absolute positive regard he had honed through twenty years of clinical work:
“No, nothing so tangential, and nothing so limiting”, he waved his hand to the side, as if batting away a pesky hustler, “truth is not balanced by falsehood or sensation; truth is balanced by uncertainty.”
He paused for a moment, allowing his client to take in the words. After several seconds of silence he continued:
“If we never let ourselves pretend the world can be more than it appears, we will never find the inspiration to create. This is what separates artists from scientists, and it’s what separates engineers from academics. The rigid walls of thought, walls you and I have spent many hours exploring, and deconstructing”, he gestured back and forth between them with his hand, “hold in the truth and keep everything false at bay, but beyond them, in the land of possibility and curiosity, where falsehood is allowed to exist, if even temporarily, we find the world of novelty and authentic growth.”
He paused again, becoming aware that his session was at risk of becoming a sermon. With a shrug and a gesture, as if to say “who can really tell, though?”, he continued:
“I’ll get off my soap box in a moment, but all this is to say: We must let ourselves play with the unimagined and the impossible to be fully human. We must have play in order to create. You need this, and your characters need this.”
The writer took a deep breath, reflected on the therapist’s wisdom, then asked, in a cautious voice:
“And once it’s real, then we can return to the truth?”
The therapist beamed and spoke with all the positive regard he could muster:
“Once it’s real, then it becomes the truth.”
The therapists words began to sink in, and deep within the writer, a cluster of neurons began to prune themselves, while a few others took root. As their bind resolved and their stress faded away, they thanked the therapist and made their way back to the streets of San Francisco. They slowly wandered past the strangely painted houses towards The Castro district, until they eventually stood beneath the giant rainbow flag. As the sun streamed through and the colours washed over them, they felt lighter, happier, and less concerned with how others would perceive them. They stayed for a few minutes before boarding the streetcar and heading home, finally prepared to write the characters they had always dreamt of.